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What do you think of the new international distribution deal? This poll is closed. |
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| Hate it |
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12 | 16.90% |
| REALLY hate it |
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16 | 22.54% |
| Hello, my name is Bob Chapek |
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43 | 60.56% |
| Total: | 71 votes | ||
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And yet somehow he got a reputation for not being a team player!
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Aug 2, 2023 02:37
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Oh no I had forgotten about rosie ball
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Aug 2, 2023 05:38
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Rochallor posted:I appreciate all the conversation about Tom Baker's behavior on and after the show, but following CobiWann's joke I was doing a bit about the story from Tom Baker's biography where he and his friends all jerked off in a circle. the gently caress
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Aug 2, 2023 05:50
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We had a thread named just that!
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Aug 2, 2023 06:43
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Sydney Bottocks posted:
Barry Letts' autobiography covers some of his behaviour during Who - the specifics elude me now, I need to read it again, but I definitely got the impression that Pertwee would take anything that wasn't nailed down and would "borrow" costumes and props for paid personal apperances. The combination of doing his best to appear as an upper class fopp while also acting like his character on The Navy Lark is extremely funny.
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Aug 2, 2023 10:18
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Fil5000 posted:Barry Letts' autobiography covers some of his behaviour during Who - the specifics elude me now, I need to read it again, but I definitely got the impression that Pertwee would take anything that wasn't nailed down and would "borrow" costumes and props for paid personal apperances. The combination of doing his best to appear as an upper class fopp while also acting like his character on The Navy Lark is extremely funny. There was a video Tom Baker did, I think it was an interview, where he talked about how he used to wind Pertwee up whenever they'd bump into each other. He'd make up a story about being offered like £5000 for some commercial or whatever, then add "but I turned it down, of course." And upon hearing this, Pertwee would immediately start nervously trembling and sweating.  Rochallor posted:I appreciate all the conversation about Tom Baker's behavior on and after the show, but following CobiWann's joke I was doing a bit about the story from Tom Baker's biography where he and his friends all jerked off in a circle. Some guy who apparently had known John Lennon since their school days once wrote a tell-all book about their long friendship, with a couple of paragraphs talking about how they did the exact same thing with some of their other school chums. Given that both the Beatles and Tom Baker are from Liverpool, I can only presume it's some sort of Liverpudlian rite of passage. Sydney Bottocks fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 15:48
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In 42 I think I would've died at the Happy Prime question. Had to look that up and I'm not happy about it. Edit: I vaguely recall being irritated by Martha's Mom, but this time around she's probably the parent with most reasonable reaction to the doctor, without the Master manipulation. Martha calls her after not even getting tons of messages from her and already being freaked out by her choice to go with Doctor. Asks her for a random trivia question, mom hears a scream of death, and Martha in a worried time is like "I gotta go."  "what about John Smith, wasn't he a good man?" Uhhh, no Doctor, he wasn't, he was training child soldiers for an evil empire lmao. Khanstant fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 17:00
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Hartnell: a man of his times, meaning he could be a bit racist/anti-Semitic sometimes Colin Baker got dinged for serial reckless driving a little while ago, which is a very serious thing for me personally.
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Aug 2, 2023 20:41
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Some guy who apparently had known John Lennon since their school days once wrote a tell-all book about their long friendship, with a couple of paragraphs talking about how they did the exact same thing with some of their other school chums. Given that both the Beatles and Tom Baker are from Liverpool, I can only presume it's some sort of Liverpudlian rite of passage. He's only wrong about one of those three words.
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Aug 3, 2023 00:27
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Jerusalem posted:I'm almost certain it's all-but-text that the Master's recent Rasputin plot was built entirely on the idea that he wanted to do the dance to troll the Doctor. The Cyberman and Dalek both giving each other a "THIS is why he insisted we set up base in 1910s Russia?" look was great. I am still astounded when I see people complaining about this scene. I've seen some on facebook just this week. It's 'not serious enough'. Firstly, I have to wonder what show you've been watching instead of Doctor Who if you think it's a deathly serious scifi drama, and secondly, if Chibbers is going to insist on having the Master be Rasputin, we'd better be seeing him dance to that bloody song before the end of the episode. Narrative Law requires it.
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Aug 3, 2023 00:57
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Yeah, I got a lot of problems with Chibnall's run, but that scene is one of his best!
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Aug 3, 2023 01:01
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Yeah I have literally no complaints about that scene and it is entirely in character for the Master to have set up the entire plan just to be able to do that.
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Aug 3, 2023 01:04
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The dance wasn't even scriptedSacha Dhawan posted:"Interestingly, with the Rasputin scene, for some reason, I must have read somewhere that he dances, and the truth of the matter is it wasn't even written in the script, I misinterpreted it. So they must have been thinking on the day like, 'What the hell is he doing? Well, this is kind of what he does, so we'll just go with it.' But hand on heart I thought that was written in the script. So I think I danced for about five, six minutes. They must have been thinking, 'What the hell is he doing?'"
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Aug 3, 2023 04:03
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 The script called for Boney M to play and then, what? He just stands there?
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Aug 3, 2023 04:54
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That's amazing, just dancing his little heart out while the confused crew watches on. 
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Aug 3, 2023 05:15
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I've always wondered if Chibnall saw The King's Man and decided to copy the Rasputin scene from that. That said, I've always assumed that the whole episode was a shout out to Dhawan being on The Great.
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Aug 3, 2023 05:16
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Haha is it common to be expected to come prepared with a dance routine sans choreographer even if the script did call for it?
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Aug 3, 2023 05:19
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https://twitter.com/DrWhoMoment/status/1686814125727629312 
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Aug 3, 2023 10:05
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DoctorWhat posted:Colin Baker got dinged for serial reckless driving a little while ago, which is a very serious thing for me personally. I'm fairly sure he's also pro brexit, which is a fairly serious thing for me.
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Aug 3, 2023 11:10
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Jerusalem posted:That's amazing, just dancing his little heart out while the confused crew watches on. But enough about Daniel Garcia, what about Sacha? For the record, I said "generally decent" people. Nobody's perfect, but I don't think we have to worry about someone finding out Colin Baker and Rose West exchanged gardening tips.
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Aug 3, 2023 11:46
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h8NmjpiY1M
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Aug 3, 2023 11:59
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I remember being so irritated by the sudden music cue only to fall in love with it when I realized The Master was actually blasting it out over the speakers because he's a giant loving rear end in a top hat  Also I'll forever love that scene for the Master using "decimate" correctly.
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Aug 3, 2023 12:05
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Season 11, Episode 8: The Witchfinders Written by Joy Wilkinson, Directed by Sallie Aprahamian King James posted:I rather like the drama. The Witchfinders is such a weird episode. For most of the episode, it's an good story covering a rather fascinating period of history and doing some interesting things around the conflicting attitudes around status and gender. It also features an enormously entertaining guest star, one who hauls a good story dangerously close to great territory with a very deliberately hammy performance that also makes the moments where things get a little more serious/intense stand out all the stronger. Unfortunately, in the closing stretch of the episode it doesn't just fall apart, it falls apart spectacularly, with a climax/resolution so astonishingly bad that it feels like it was written by two different people. Written by Joy Wilkinson, who has written multiple plays and dozens of television episodes and adaptations, so it was put together by somebody who would seem to know what they're doing, which just makes the ending stand out all the more for how it falls apart. Maybe this was just a result of changes from the original draft - a more specific focus on The Pendle Witch Trials - or it's another example of modern Who's seeming refusal to write a story that does NOT have some kind of science fiction/alien aspect to it, regardless of whether that would suit the story or not.  The story starts with the Doctor bringing the companions to see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the 1st.... and of course completely loving it all up and landing in the wrong place AND time. They're in Lancashire, not London, with a neat little nod to the semi-permanence of landmarks when it's Graham who figures out where they are thanks to recognizing Pendle Hill. It isn't 1559 but 1612, and they're in Bilehurst Cragg, a village that Graham definitely hasn't heard of. That alone wouldn't be unusual, places come and go of course, but Graham mentions that he has done the "Witches Walk" historical tour before that runs through the history of the area, and he's never heard of the place even mentioned in passing. The Doctor gives her usual warning to them all not to interfere as they leave a celebration (for no special reason, it's Sunday, and a kid tells them they just... like to have parties on Sunday!) to attend the far more grim affair of a Witch Ducking. The companions of course have heard this all before (part of the issue when a bunch of writers are doing independent episodes about a new Doctor and new companions, they repeat some key points) which makes it doubly hilarious that Yaz IMMEDIATELY steps over to ask a crying woman in the procession if she's okay. Just as in other episodes, it is of course the Doctor who almost immediately breaks her own rule. When Old Mother Twiston is ducked in the water by the order of Mistress Becka Savage, the Doctor whips off her coat and dives in to haul her out, though she's too late to prevent her from drowning. The screwed up logic of the witch trial, of course, is that drowning means innocence while living means guilt (and thus death), and a furious Mistress Savage declares that the Doctor's interference means they can't take Mother Twiston's death as proof of her innocence, so they'll have to kill her granddaughter Willa (the crying girl) instead! Charming time, the 1600s. Furious herself, the Doctor - after an initial failure to find it, which had me hoping she'd lost or neutralized it in the water and would have to think of another solution - pulls out her Psychic Paper and uses it to outrank Mistress Savage's status as the head of the village, turning herself into the Witchfinder General, authorized by the King himself in all matters regarding the discovery and punishment of witches. This makes for a very interesting reaction, as Savage immediately and seemingly without hesitation immediately submits to the Doctor's authority. There is a lot going on here, even before we get into the deeper details of Savage as a character: she clearly appears to be somebody for whom there is an accepted order to things, her authority being stymied does not appear to bother her at all once it is established that the Doctor has the "right" kind of authority to supersede it. The Doctor dismisses the villagers, spares Willa from being ducked, and Savage offers to take the Doctor to her home, willing and seemingly eager to share private information about the problems in Bilehurst Cragg that have lead to her "trialing" (murdering) 35 witches (innocent people)! Savage offers some backstory as they walk, showing that her own status as head of the village is essentially inherited due to her status as the widow of the landowner for the entire village. Wilkinson invests the character with some complexity, she's undoubtedly responsible for the needless deaths of almost 3 dozen people, but her acknowledgement of the difficulties a woman has in being accepted as an authority shows that she's probably also never entirely comfortable in her own position. While Elizabeth I was Queen for decades, she held a rather unique position in the time that didn't necessarily flow downwards to other women, and it's perhaps not a surprise that Savage has draped herself in the authority of religion to help bolster her own status. Which isn't to say the Doctor just accepts this, she's determined to stop the killing, with Yaz peeling off to go and speak with Willa to both get information but also provide her with some emotional support (again, an aspect of policing that is less frequently shown in media portrayals). Up to this point, the stakes have been set, the setting established, there appears to be an antagonist of sorts with the suggestion of some other underlying factor that might complicate that role. It's all good stuff, and the episode is moving along in an interesting way.... but it's here where things suddenly take a spectacular turn for the better. SiKboy posted:Did anyone order a MASSIVE HAM! After several appearances of a mysterious masked figure watching everything transpire, suddenly Alan Cumming appears on the scene! Whipping off his mask, he introduces himself with a wonderfully over-dramatic flourish: It is he, King James! Before the stunned... well, everybody! the King proclaims himself as God's Chosen Ruler and Satan's greatest foe, drinking in the drama of the situation, taking great delight in explaining his masked appearance was to allow him to evade enemies while traveling incognito.... and also he rather likes the drama!  Boy does he! The energy of the entire episode suddenly skyrockets, Cumming chewing on the scenery with incredible relish. He immediately takes control of the scene, literally in one aspect as his force of personality and utter belief in his own superior status (and prejudice, of course) makes him reject the Doctor's projected Psychic Paper identifying her as the Witchfinder General. Instead, his own mind shoves "assistant" into there instead, demoting a stunned Doctor instantly as he identifies Graham - the white older male - as the ACTUAL Witchfinder General, complete with giving him a (delightfully) ridiculous hat to wear. It's all played for laughs, as well as his immediate and obvious "interest" in Ryan, playing on well-established elements of the real James' personality... but there's also an underlying menace. The silly hat he gives Graham has a bullet-hole in it from where the last Witchfinder was killed for "betraying" him, he dismisses the Doctor as simply a "lassie" while offering some mildly paternalistic praise Madam Savage's way, even his approval of the Doctor's status as Graham's "Assistant" is born out of the conception that women have an "innate aptitude for nosiness and gossip." When he and Ryan chat, it's all flirty (uneasily on Ryan's behalf, as he tries to keep James distracted) but any attempt at finding common ground falls apart as Ryan realizes just how incredibly hosed up James' childhood and most of his pre-King adult life has been. James is an educated man, but very much a product of his time, and the effectiveness of his reign as King has been somewhat debated: he remained popular for most of his reign but his court was a largely disorganized mess, England lost some of its status as a major European power that it had gained under Elizabeth, he revamped the Church and made his version of the Bible which has been praised (and condemned!) for its enormous influence on the English language, while his book Daemonologie was a wholehearted endorsement of witchhunting which would lead to (further) untold deaths. There has been endless debate over his sexuality, though the preponderance of evidence (including completely open contemporary accounts) suggests most of the denial of his homosexuality falls very much into the "Oh my God they were roommates" category. In this episode, King James exhibits open admiration for male beauty, not just for Ryan ("my Nubian Prince" he calls him in their very first encounter!) but also his protector Alfonso, though he laments it is surely only a matter of time before he betrays him as well. Poor Alfonso never gets a chance, killed by the shuffling corpses of Savage's victims during their attempt to retrieve an aspect of themselves from the Doctor after she isolates it.   What was his plan here? He just runs directly up to them. I get the feeling he wasn't chosen because of his skills as a fighter! This marks the first time in an episode this season where the Doctor's status as a woman is really examined in more than simply cursory detail. When Chibnall put together his writers for this season, he didn't tell them that he planned to cast a woman as the Doctor, meaning their stories were largely written with generic "Doctor" traits to be expanded on later in the writing process by awareness of who this new Doctor would be and how they would react in given situations. For the most part this has worked well, stories were told that focused more on the adventures and the development of relationships with the new companions, instead of spending too much time inwardly gazing at the Doctor's character at the expense of all else. But here, in this episode, the Doctor runs headfirst into just outright historically accepted sexism. It was kind of there in Rosa in one scene where the local cop comes to visit the hotel, and the Doctor comments on the novelty of being invited into the women's party in Demons of the Punjab, but those were largely standalone moments that didn't have any real lasting impact. It's really rather fascinating seeing the Doctor coming to terms with this new (entirely unfair) reality, which itself stands in stark contrast to earlier Doctors having a self assurance born out of unmistakable privilege. In The Shakespeare Code, Martha uneasily brings up being a black woman in 1599 (a little over a decade before this story!) and the 10th Doctor blithely assures her that all you have to do is act like you own the place and everything will work out, saying it always does for him. That was a rather tone deaf response, a white man telling a black woman that it's easy, you just act like you belong and nobody will question it! Here, the Doctor finds herself first sidelined and later accused of being a witch herself as she gets closer and closer to the truth behind the presence of "Satan" in the village. Just as an aside, the Doctor dismisses the idea of Satan existing, which is kind of hilarious since she's met Satan before! In an episode literally called The Satan Pit! The Doctor's frustration is palpable and entirely understandable. She complains that if she was still a bloke she'd have been able to "get on with the job" rather than spending all her time defending herself instead. She's left seething by her arguments and attempts at reason being sidelined by comments on her "alluring form" and accusations that she is trying to "bewitch" men, but it also leads to perhaps one of the strongest scenes in the episode. Having to fight an uphill battle, the Doctor - while restrained after being accused of being a witch - turns around an attempted interrogation by the King, coming tantalizingly close to convincing him of the error of his ways before his own built-in prejudices and utter assurance in his own divine right to stand above others prove too much to overcome. It's not the last time we'll see the Doctor turn around the expected power dynamic between captor and captive, because of course the Doctor's greatest strength has always been her ability to talk. Indeed, perhaps my favorite exchange in the entire episode comes when Savage - thinking she is about to kill the Doctor and remove the threat to her secret - takes the time to try and goad her. Savage, her own status as a landowner and with the support of the King making her feel at least momentarily above the general status of women at the time, taunts the Doctor by pointing out what they both already know: the ducking chair isn't so much an instrument to find witches, but to put women "in their place." Mistress Savage: Do you know why the ducking stool was invented, Doctor? To silence foolish women who talked too much. Doctor: Yeah, I did know that. Which is daft, cos talking's brilliant. Talking IS brilliant, and Savage's failure to get a rise out of her causes her to accidentally reveal a dramatic reaction to her physically touching the wood of the Ducking "chair" (really a cut up piece of tree trunk). The Doctor, of course, could have escaped her bonds at any time, and after being Ducked she slips free, comes back to the shore, and pushes Savage to really come clean about what is going on. What her ACTUAL plan here was I'm not entirely sure, since Savage says her survival proves she is a witch and the Doctor's response is basically,"Nah I'm not"... but she's gotten information now, new information to help her put the pieces together. By general luck, the shambling corpses of Savage's victims show up again and we get one last truly great moment in this episode before it all falls to poo poo. Savage's facade cracks and she spills out a tearful, self-hating confession. SHE is the one possessed by "Satan", she chopped down the tree that has become the Ducking Hair because it was spoiling her view, and was stabbed by one of the mud tendrils that almost caught Willa earlier in the episode. Ever since, she has felt "Satan's" corruption flowing through her, and the deaths (35 of them!) that followed were her attempting to either find a culprit behind her corruption or to cover up for herself by killing those who discovered her ailment. The Doctor is revolted to learn she murdered so many purely to hide her own status, but when an equally revolted (for different reasons) James accuses her of being a witch, all her own revulsion spills out as she sobs that it's true, she IS a witch, she IS possessed by Satan. She's not, of course, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that she believes it. Becka Savage, a woman in the unusual for the time but luxurious position of landowner and undisputed authority of the village, is a true believer. She wasn't paying lip service to the King's well-published beliefs regarding demons, witches and Satan, even if she took advantage of them. She's been living with the realization that something is wrong with her, the belief that she is damned fighting against the obvious instinct for self preservation. It's a really, really strong scene with a pretty drat solid performance by Siobhan Finneran... which makes what follows so deeply, bitterly disappointing.  The episode degenerates into.... a complete loving mess is probably the nicest way to put it. Perhaps due to the make-up, Finneran's performance turns into her simply standing and shouting... but the make-up can't change the dialogue or indeed the editing. Everything becomes an exposition dump, with Savage just kinda standing there and screaming out a long story about a race called the Morax who got imprisoned in Pendle Hill billions of years ago but snuck out through the mud tendrils when Savage cut down the tree. Now they want to "fill" the bodies of humans with their presence, including putting their own King into the body of King James (why? They're not going to pretend to be human, why would they need to specifically be in the King of England's body?) and "fill this whole planet with rage and force and hate and Morax!"  Everybody gets knocked out by the force of the Queen taking control of Savage, and they grab King James' body and race away to the remains of the tree trunk to finish whatever ceremony is needed to release their own King. They.... just leave the Doctor and the companions alive? They wake up a short time later, turn parts of the Ducking Chair into torches which they can use to restrain the Morax again, and then Willa - who was put in the uneasy position earlier of decrying the Doctor as a witch herself for fear of Savage killing her instead - decides to make up for things by leading them to the tree trunk since she is the only one who knows how to get them there. It turns out "there" is just on the completely open field/hill just outside Savage's home which Becka took them all to earlier in the episode! Some torches get waved about, a bad CGI "King" wiggles about a bit, and the "Queen" screeches as the Doctor - now that she knows what she's dealing with - reactivates the prison and sends the Morax back inside. Before Savage's own body can be released though, a freed King James of course addresses the problem in the only way he knows, fully convinced of course of the rightness of his own actions as he tosses one of the special flaming torches onto Savage's body and burns her to death. Having learned seemingly nothing, James seems surprised by the Doctor's horror at his action, pointing out that she was a witch and confessed to such, and thus the punishment was just. Regardless of whether Savage was still in that body somewhere or her mind was burned out by the Queen, the Doctor's objection is to murder no matter who the victim is. It's interesting in that sense that King James' opinion is that Savage was guilty regardless of the external factors, and it's with infuriating pride that he declares,"I have vanquished Satan!" That makes the following scene where King James and Willa accompany the Doctor to the TARDIS all the weirder. Apart from the Doctor who isn't talking to the King, they're all fairly chummy, King James pouting like an overgrown child to Ryan about it, not used to people standing in judgment of him since he came to the crown. The atmosphere is weirdly festive, with the companions amused by King James' offer to Ryan to join him in London as his "protector", and Graham quoting Pulp Fiction at him which the King identifies of course as a verse from Ezekiel. They leave in the TARDIS after King James promises the Doctor that he'll remove all records of Bilehurst Cragg so nobody ever comes near the Morax prison again. King James is stunned by the disappearance and Willa pleased, but that also feels weirdly like playing with fire given what we've seen of James so far. What would stop him from deciding the Doctor really was a witch after all? Plus Willa's open admission that she plans to follow in her grandmother's healer footsteps puts her dangerously close to the same kind of work that got the original Pendle "Witches" in trouble in the first place.  The Witchfinders is a good episode that could have been great but runs dangerously close to being bad. In the end it all I guess basically evens out to "good", but it's such a shame to see that great potential not realized. Alan Cumming is fantastic as King James, though having him both played for laughs but also showing he's in effect a murderous, superstitious idiot makes him a complex character. Complex isn't bad, it's good! But it also makes it difficult to get a read on him. Siobhan Finneran does a great job as Mistress Savage but is let down enormously by the terrible final stretch of the episode, where all the interesting historical backdrop, gender and authority issues and the exploitation of superstitions and fears falls by the wayside in favor of some CGI and a bunch of gibberish dialogue about some alien race nobody has ever heard of or cares about that completely changes the stakes of the episode. At this point in the season, apart from Kerblam! (which was fun in the moment!) the season has been solid if unspectacular, with the first episode the real standout and everything else having some really strong moments but also some baffling decisions. Jodie Whittaker has been fantastic as the Doctor, the companions have been a little diluted due to there being 3 of them, but we've reached a point where this new Doctor is starting to feel somewhat established. So the trailer for the next episode being so underwhelming (a shot of walking through a forest and some dude talking in a cave) didn't raise great hopes for anything beyond at best a pretty good episode but also probably not a bad one. Luckily, the trailer was misleading, and what comes next is an all-time classic great episode of Doctor Who. If only this one could have been as well, it came so close! Index of Doctor Who Write-ups for Television Episodes/Big Finish Audio Stories. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 16:06
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I've been doing my rewatch before the 60th whenever I'm caring for our newborn to let my wife (who has never seen a single second of Doctor Who) get some rest and I swear she only comes in at the weirdest out of context moments like the "Here Comes the Drums" music cue or earlier on walking in on the farting aliens. She must think this show is utterly insane
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Aug 3, 2023 17:56
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jisforjosh posted:I've been doing my rewatch before the 60th whenever I'm caring for our newborn to let my wife (who has never seen a single second of Doctor Who) get some rest and I swear she only comes in at the weirdest out of context moments like the "Here Comes the Drums" music cue or earlier on walking in on the farting aliens. She’s right.
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Aug 3, 2023 18:51
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Jerusalem posted:Just as an aside, the Doctor dismisses the idea of Satan existing, which is kind of hilarious since she's met Satan before! In an episode literally called The Satan Pit! "Who told you that was Satan?" "Well... he did." "Oh, you should know you can't believe a word Satan says."
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Aug 3, 2023 19:53
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Honestly, the onset politics of classic Doctor Who are fascinating, mostly because the actors who played the Doctors were often complex people and had complicated relationships with their co-stars. It's quite an intense role, after all. Like how Maureen O'Brien looks back very fondly on her relationship with Hartnell, whereas Anneke Wills had a more distant one with him. It seems like Tom Baker used the role as a coping mechanism for his own issues, and that either ended up with him being great onset, or really hard to work with (Louise Jameson famously had to give him a verbal dressing down on the set of the Horror of Fang Rock after he'd spent the first few weeks onset being rude to her - apparently they get on really well now). It seems like he's much happier after the 90s now. Apparently on the set of The Carnival of Monsters, Jon Pertwee misunderstood and thought they were filming on a ship that was going to be scrapped, and took the ship's compass as a souvenir. Turns out it wasn't and he had to quickly return it. Anyway, another audio! We continue the Six/Charley run with The Doomwood Curse, a fun little tale about a run in with Dick Turpin. Charley dips back into her more naive, bookish side in a natural way without feeling like her character development is being undone. India Fisher gets to put on some very over the top West Country accents (for some reason, Charley is a brunette on the cover. No idea why). Also there's a pre-MCU Hayley Atwell in a supporting role. It's a fun send up of early novels and the related tropes. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 21:07
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Narsham posted:"Who told you that was Satan?" Very barely related, but this reminds me of one of my favorite little recurring bits the 11th (and maybe the 10th?) Doctor had, where he'd make an analogy, get to the end and then say,"Well anyway... it's nothing like that."
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Aug 4, 2023 03:50
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Aug 4, 2023 20:26
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Peak doctor who
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Aug 4, 2023 20:52
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Next one, Brotherhood of the Daleks is ambitious, but messy. The Doctor and Charley stumble on a Thal experiment to try and develop a hallucinatory weapon against the Daleks - there's some interesting ideas with the blurring of the lines between Thal and Dalek, but it collapses under its own complexity. The gimmick of the story - Daleks brainwashed into a bizarre form of Marxism comes in too late and isn't foreshadowed enough to be really effective. And the Doctor just....leaves at the end, and its five parts for some reason, rather than four. However, the Baker/Fisher dynamic continues to shine, which is impressive, considering that they both admit in the extras that they didn't fully understand the story! In the end, Shadow of the Daleks does it better.
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Aug 4, 2023 21:11
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Aww the minisode Time Crash is really sweet and a funny lead-in bit to the Voyage of the Damned. edit: I want a christmas special where the Doctor gives baby jesus a present and also has to blow up santa clausian assassins trying to kill the baby jesus or something Khanstant fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 4, 2023 21:15
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OldMemes posted:Next one, Brotherhood of the Daleks is ambitious, but messy. The Doctor and Charley stumble on a Thal experiment to try and develop a hallucinatory weapon against the Daleks - there's some interesting ideas with the blurring of the lines between Thal and Dalek, but it collapses under its own complexity. The gimmick of the story - Daleks brainwashed into a bizarre form of Marxism comes in too late and isn't foreshadowed enough to be really effective. And the Doctor just....leaves at the end, and its five parts for some reason, rather than four. However, the Baker/Fisher dynamic continues to shine, which is impressive, considering that they both admit in the extras that they didn't fully understand the story! It's playing really silly games with structure. e.g. it's built so the cliffhanger to episode two is Charley explaining the plot to Terror Firma -- because it's exactly half way through that earlier play that there was a smaller flashback from a companion's perspective to as yet unheard of events. It's mirroring so much about the earlier play, down to the music cues, that it's basically a sequel that also operates as a quasi prequel. It's akin to watching The Wheel of Space in the show's first run and then watching Evil of the Daleks the week after because that's what the characters are doing that week. Re: the five parts. It's not. The end to what I think(?) I'm right in saying you've identified as the fourth ending exists because the characters are hallucinating that it's the end of the story and everything is happy now, because the play is getting metatextual again and poking fun at the reality of the series, as if they're on some level aware that they're in a show and that their episodic four parter is ending. There's no intro to part 5 because that's not a new episode, it's because it's the true ending.
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Aug 4, 2023 21:22
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That makes sense. Decided to squeeze another audio in, The Raincloud Man. DCI Menzies returns from The Condemned, and again is a wonderful supporting character. However, the first two episodes of this one otherwise feel a little aimless, but the final two episodes really pick up the pace, and there's a great sense of tension as The Doctor and Charley face an alien casino. And the idea of an artificial race that only exist to prevent aggressive actions of one species is fascinating. Uneven, but with a strong second half. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Aug 5, 2023 |
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Aug 5, 2023 01:00
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I saw Creature from the Pit again. Oh yeah.
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Aug 6, 2023 02:19
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I think The Creature From The Pit has a really great sense of humour ("We call it... THE PIT") plus all the stuff with the resource scarcity is cool and interesting... or at least, it reminds me a lot of the crisis in the first Baldur's Gate game. I think it's underappreciated in its own weird way. I have no idea what was going on with costumes during the tail end of that season though -- the Mandrels from Nightmare From Eden and Nimon from Horns of the Nimon are both absolutely insane designs. The Nimon be praised. Action Jacktion posted:I saw Creature from the Pit again. Oh yeah. Dick's gotta eat.
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Aug 6, 2023 06:54
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Open Source Idiom posted:The Nimon be praised. What's the status of his dreams of conquest? 
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Aug 6, 2023 07:22
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Open Source Idiom posted:I think The Creature From The Pit has a really great sense of humour ("We call it... THE PIT") plus all the stuff with the resource scarcity is cool and interesting... or at least, it reminds me a lot of the crisis in the first Baldur's Gate game. I think it's underappreciated in its own weird way. The Nimons were originally supposed to be costumes; as in, they'd pull off those bull heads and reveal the real aliens underneath. But at some point the production decide "eh, the bull masks are good enough, no reason to spring for a second alien mask."
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Aug 6, 2023 18:40
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Patient Zero - the Charley and Six story line starts to come to a head, as the two end up being trapped on a space station full of viruses that the daleks decide they want. It's the first appearance of the Dalek Time Controller, but he's not as fleshed out as his later appearances - they don't give you enough context about the character about what makes him special just yet. Colin Baker gets to have some intense moments, and there's some fun twists on the 'daleks put a base under siege' formula. Charley's repeated annoying of the TARDIS finally catches up with her, as she gets attacked by Mila, an intangible and invisible woman who has been trapped on the TARDIS for a very long time, who decides that she wants to become a proper companion...by becoming Charley. Mila is interesting, the right mix between unsettling and tragic.
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Aug 6, 2023 23:10
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Davros1 posted:The Nimons were originally supposed to be costumes; as in, they'd pull off those bull heads and reveal the real aliens underneath. But at some point the production decide "eh, the bull masks are good enough, no reason to spring for a second alien mask." I did not know this. My favourite Nimon factoid is that they're all played by ballerinas.
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Aug 7, 2023 04:43
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